Brown Anniversary Observed In Topeka by Bush and Kerry

The 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka drew President Bush
and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to separate appearances last week
in the city where the case originated, even while both said that the
decision’s vision of equal educational opportunity had yet to be
fulfilled.

"Fifty years ago today, nine judges announced that they had looked
at the Constitution and saw no justification for the segregation and
humiliation of an entire race," President Bush said during the
dedication of a national historic site and museum at the Monroe School
in Topeka, Kan., one of four elementary schools in the city once
designated for black students.

"Here at the corner of 15th and Monroe, and at schools like it
across America, that was a day of justice—and it was a long time
coming," Mr. Bush said in a relatively short but eloquent address on
May 17 to an audience that included U.S. Secretary of Education Rod
Paige, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, and Supreme Court Justice
Stephen G. Breyer.

Earlier in the day, Sen. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic
presidential nominee, spoke on the steps of the state Capitol, where
Gov. Sebelius, a Democrat, signed a proclamation marking the
Brown anniversary.

"All of America is a better place because of Brown," Mr.
Kerry said in prepared remarks. "But we have more to do. ...

"We should not delude ourselves into thinking that the work of
Brown is done when there are those who still seek, in different
ways, to see it undone," he said. "To roll back affirmative action, to
restrict equal rights, to undermine the promise of our
Constitution."

Mr. Kerry used the occasion to argue that Mr. Bush had not ensured
adequate funding of the main federal education law.

"You cannot promise no child left behind and then pursue policies
that leave millions of children behind every single day," he said,
according to The New York Times. "Because that promise is a
promissory note to all of America’s families that must be paid in
full."

Mr. Bush’s speech avoided references to politics and only
briefly alluded to the No Child Left Behind Act.

"[W]hile our schools are no longer segregated by law, they are not
equal in opportunity and excellence," the president said. "Justice
requires more than a place in a school. Justice requires that every
school teach every child in America."

The two candidates did not cross paths. Sen. Kerry’s plane
left Topeka shortly before the president arrived aboard Air Force
One.

Investor’s Philanthropy

Secretary Paige, also speaking at the Brown museum event,
reflected on his own memories of racism.

"I grew up in rural, segregated Mississippi," he said in prepared
remarks. "We lived with segregation and the racism that inspired it
every single day. … By example, many of our schools taught
inequality, incivility, callousness, disregard, exclusion, and
disrespect."

Mr. Paige repeated his argument that the No Child Left Behind Act
picks up on the work begun with the Brown decision.

"Brown opened the doors of our schools," he said. "Now we
must build on that decision to make education fully inclusive and fair.
That’s why there are efforts like the No Child Left Behind Act,
the next logical step to Brown because it tries to provide equal
opportunity in fact as well as law."

In one of the Supreme Court’s few official acknowledgments of
the anniversary of one of its most significant decisions, Justice
Breyer also spoke at the Monroe School event.

"May 17, 1954, was a great day—many would say the greatest
day—in the history of [the Supreme Court]," he said in prepared
remarks. "Brown’s simple affirmation helped us all to
understand that our Constitution was meant to create not a democracy
just written on paper, but a democracy that works in practice. …
"

In an initiative timed for the anniversary, a Wall Street investor,
Alphonse Fletcher Jr., announced that he would donate $50 million to
individuals and institutions working to improve race relations and
ensure better opportunities, including educational opportunities, for
African-Americans.

Mr. Fletcher, the founder and chairman of Fletcher Asset Management,
planned to give part of the gift to the Howard University School of
Law, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which all played
pivotal roles in the original Brown cases, as well as to the
Comer School Development Program at Yale University. That program is
charged with implementing a school and systemwide intervention
formulated by James P. Comer, a Yale professor of child psychiatry.

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